If I'm not supposed to eat below my BMR...

gomisskellygo

Sorry to pee on your pity party. Carry on.

I look forward to living in a world that does not conform to basic science and math.

You are forgiven.

Sabine_Stroehm

Sorry to pee on your pity party. Carry on.

I look forward to living in a world that does not conform to basic science and math.

Remember this conversation when you're 50.

And again: no pity here. Sorry you're confused.

cheers!

Spanaval

Sorry to pee on your pity party. Carry on.

I look forward to living in a world that does not conform to basic science and math.

Not sure why you're getting pissy. It's a fact of life that your metabolism slows down as you age, and it gets easier to gain weight, and harder to lose it. Not that it cannot be done, just that it's harder.

Also, pretty sure you wouldn't want to live in a world that does not conform to basic tenets of science. Yaknow, stuff like gravity.

mariajae

I don't know the answer, but I do know that there are more numbers involved in how our body really works than weight. Pulse rate, metabolism, hormone levels, etc. I think experimentation is the only way to find out what works for you.

mtcHavingItAll

This was helpful to me: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

Me, too. Thanks!

laurelj72

I'm eating 1100-1200 calories a day by eating 3 meals and 2 snacks.. healthy food. No fried, no massive sugars, etc. My BMR according to that Scooby site is 1872! How in the world am I supposed to eat that level of calories and still eat healthy? I'm not hungry. I don't have a headache. I hydrate often. I exercise.

runningfromzombies

It's BASIC MATH people.

I really wish this was true. In my 20's it was. Now not so much!! However, I will find my magic number:)

I whole heartedly agree. As someone in my late forties, in menopause, it IS HARDER.

That is not true: a pound is 3500 calories. You have to burn 3,500 calories more than you eat to lose a pound. It doesn't matter who you are, how old you are, what color your skin is, your weight, your location, your sex, your ANYTHING. Losing a pound is the same amount of calories for EVERYONE.

However if you want to make excuses to yourself to say that "THINGS ARE HARDER FOR ME," go for it. But don't pass it off as fact.

Cool story bro, but it's not that simple. I spent four months training for a half-marathon and eating at a 500 calorie deficit from my TDEE every day the majority of the time, but I only lost about 5 pounds. It's true that if you rifle through my food diaries from December 5, 2011 to April 8th, 2012, you'll find some less-than-perfect days (and some, particularly closer to race day, where I purposely ate at maintenance or higher), but overall, considering the pure math and net calories, I ought to have lost about 12 pounds in that period of time. In those eighteen weeks, I would have had to have eaten 63,000 calories higher than my calorie goal to maintain--an additional 500 calories per day or 3,500 per week. But over that eighteen weeks, I only overate my calorie goal by 20,705 calories, leaving me 42,295 in the negative. Divide that by 3,500--a "pound"--and I ought to have lost 12 pounds. Only lost five. The math doesn't always add up. You're forgetting that things like water weight, muscle mass, and stress all factor into the number on the scale.

tabulator32

Think of BMR as one factor in an equation.

BMR (calories burned) + exercise/activities (calories burned) = total calories burned, then...

Total calories consumed - total calories burned = amount gained or lost (with 3500 calories equaling a pound).

Negative amounts would be a net loss and positive amounts would be a net gain.